her friend had feared, open the case. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she not have taken her for a thief?
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. Right from the start she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The servant was under dismissed. They changed their apartment; they took a garret under the roof.
She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dishcloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.
Every month notes had to be paid off, others to be renewed, time to be gained.
Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant’s accounts, and often at night he did copying at twopence halfpenny a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything, the usurer’s charges and the accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.
What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels? Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save!
One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Élysées to freshen herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive.
Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?
She went up to her.
“Good morning, Jeanne.”
The other did not recognise her, and was surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a poor woman.
“But … madame …” she stammered. “I don’t know … you must be making a mistake.”
“No … I am Mathilde Loisel.”
Her friend uttered a cry.
“Oh! … my poor Mathilde, how you have changed! …”
“Yes, I’ve had some hard times since I saw you last; and many sorrows … and all on your account.”
“On my account! … How was that?”
“You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the Ministry?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, I lost it.”
“How could you? Why, you brought it back.”
“I brought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we have been paying for it. You realise it wasn’t easy for us; we had no money … Well, it’s paid for at last, and I’m mighty glad.”
Madame Forestier had halted.
“You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?”
“Yes. You hadn’t noticed it? They were very much alike.”
And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most only five hundred francs! …”
The Awakening
During the three years that she had been married, she had not left the Val de Ciré, where her husband possessed two cotton-mills. She led a quiet life, and, although without children, she was quite happy in her house among the trees, which the work-people called the “château.”
Although Monsieur Vasseur was considerably older than she was, he was very kind. She loved him, and no guilty thought had ever entered her mind.
Her mother came and spent every summer at Ciré, and then returned to Paris for the winter, as soon as the leaves began to fall.
Jeanne coughed a little every autumn, for the narrow valley through which the river wound was very foggy for five months in the year. First of all, slight mists hung over the meadows, making all the low-lying ground look like a large pond, out of which the roofs of the houses rose. Then a white vapour, which rose like a tide, enveloped everything, turning the valley into a phantom land, through which men moved like ghosts, without recognizing each other ten yards off, and the trees, wreathed in mist and dripping with moisture, rose up through it.
But the people who went along the neighbouring hills, and looked down upon the deep, white depression of the valley, saw the two huge chimneys of Monsieur Vasseur’s factories rising above the mist below. Day and night they vomited forth two long trails of black smoke, the sole indication that people were living in the hollow, which looked as if it were filled with a cloud of cotton.
That year, when October came, the medical men advised the young woman to go and spend the winter in Paris with her mother, as the air of the valley was dangerous for her weak chest, and she went. For a month or so, she thought continually of the house which she had left, the home to which she seemed rooted, the well-known furniture and quiet ways of which she loved so much. But by degrees she grew accustomed to her new life, and got to like entertainments, dinner and evening parties, and balls.
Till then she had retained her girlish manners, had been undecided and rather sluggish, walked languidly, and had a tired smile, but now
